Shopping nightmare

We needed to finish our provisioning today, so we were ready to head out with a fully stocked boat.  Having read the boaters information about Cartagena, Carrefour appeared to be the place to go.  For those of you unfamiliar with Cartagena or planning a trip here BE WARNED!

Our experience shopping in Carrefour was not a pleasant one.  The cab drops you off in a huge underground parking lot of the mall, where you really have no clue where you are.  Finding the Carrefour was not particularly easy, thousands of people and screaming children bustled around everywhere, it was noisy, hot and confusing, no one speaks English, and of course we speak no Spanish, so asking for help was impossible, everyone we tried to ask just laughed at us.

Eventually we did find the store.  The selection of foods and beverages was limited and expensive, obnoxiously loud music was playing and really getting on my nerves, the isles were full of people, which made moving our 2 carts through very difficult, it was a shopping nightmare, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.  It took us about 90 minutes to get only ¾ of the things we needed, so we left.  We were helped with our carts down to the underground parking lot where you ask at a desk for a ticket for a taxi, then you stand in the stifling heat while an attendant takes your ticket and puts you in a queue for the taxi’s which arrive about every 10 minutes, there were at least 50 maybe more people ahead of us, not counting the ones who jumped the line.  This was an example of disorganization at its finest. There was a group of small children playing while their mothers stood and chatted, the children were running around with a ball all screaming as loud as they could, I had to cover my ears the noise was so bad. We stood and waited for over an hour in intense heat while we were passed over by people time and time again pushing in front, before Bob lost his cool and demanded the next taxi.  Our taxi was the typical Cartagena tiny bubble of a car, and getting 3 cartloads of groceries and the two of us in was a challenge to say the least.  I was wedged in the back, crushed by the bags of groceries, and holding 60 eggs in my lap, an accident waiting to happen.

Our relief at finally getting a taxi didn’t last long, because then we had to get out of the parking lot.  The roads were crammed with vehicles all stopped, no one could move and a policeman trying to direct traffic was being totally unsuccessful, motorbikes were flying past in both directions over the sidewalks, people were getting out of their vehicles and moving the bollards so they could drive over the sidewalks, everyone was blowing their horns, quite why, I have no clue, it had no effect other than to add to the infernal noise.  Our one saving grace was that our cab was air-conditioned.

The direction we needed to go in was completely jammed with stationary vehicles, so the cab driver drove in the opposite direction, and took us through an area where he had to lock our doors because it was dangerous.  The streets were full of people, hundreds of them everywhere you looked, the roads were just jammed with vehicles in all directions, and we barely got out of first gear.

Carrefour was only a 3-minute cab ride from the marina, but because all the roads were jammed, we had to drive all the way around the city, which turned into a 30-minute cab ride to reach the marina.

We left to do our shopping at 3:30 in the afternoon and arrived back at the marina at 8:15 pm.  Our shopping trip had taken almost 5 hours. I was thoroughly exhausted.

For those of you that may come here in the future, there is a perfectly acceptable supermarket just a 2 minute walk from the marina, it’s a little more expensive than Carrefour, but with none of the hassle. I can honestly say Carrefour was not worth the trip, it will be a cold day in hell before I ever return there.